I dont enjoy casinos, but I have got to go to Atlantic City. I cant imagine why I never heard about this before late last night when a documentary about its restoration popped up on TV. The largest organ in the world, also the largest musical instrument in the world, also the largest mechanical device in the world is in Boardwalk Hall (previously known as Convention Hall) in Atlantic City, NJ. It is a pipe organ with over 30,000 pipes. Some are brass and exactly duplicate the sound of the brass section of an orchestra. Others are made of wood and sound exactly like clarinets and the other woodwinds. The tallest pipe is 64 feet long, made of wood from a giant sequoia. It vibrates at 8 Hz. That is six octaves below middle C! That is not even a note. It is well below the limits of human hearing. You can feel that as a vibration, but you cant hear it with your ears. Why were such low frequencies included at great cost? Is there music written that includes those notes? It takes a lot of sound energy to fill a hall as large as that one in Atlantic City, especially for the lowest notes. The organ is driven by air pumps whose electric motors generate 600 horsepower. Those of you who passed physics might remember that one horsepower is equal to over 745 watts. So we are talking about an organ that can make a sound that, if produced electronically through speakers, would require an amplifier rated at approximately 450,000 watts RMS! I am impressed. thepinkpuck/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Boardwalk-Hall-Auditorium-Organ-in-Atlantic-City-NJ..jpg
Posted on: Sun, 09 Nov 2014 17:21:46 +0000
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